Cindel: None yet. Have you tried the Financial District?
Dots appear before a message pops up.
Andrea: NO WAY! They walk like they have a stick up their ass. Plus, they’re not even into strap-ons.
A laugh bursts out of me, just as Craig happens by.
I try to discreetly slip my phone back into my front apron pocket but based on how quickly he’s waddling toward my lane, I know I’ve been caught.
“Miss Mari, was that a personal phone I just saw on the floor? Per company policy, all employees are to leave their electronic devices within their designated cubbies in the backroom.”
No one used those things. Half the time our stuff turns up missing. That’s why most of the girls shove their purses in the bottom of a filing cabinet.
His voice is ridiculously loud, causing customers to look in our direction. I hate when there’s unnecessary attention on me.
Craig just stands there with his hands on his hips. It feels more like a disappointed coach, who was waiting for an excuse as to why their star athlete went against the play he just carefully laid out.
Don’t chew on yourself, Cindel. Speak!
“I was sending a message to my uncle! He’s sick...” I fib.
“Do you commonly laugh when your family gets sick?” His too shiny face glistens beneath the store’s fluorescent lighting, as he continues his reign of middle management terror. “Hm?”
This guy really takes his job too seriously.
“It was kind of an inside joke. Sorry. I’ll put it away now.”
He licks his top set of teeth then gives his pants a small lift around the belt.
“I’m glad you're choosing compliance. Flip off the switch for your lane light and follow me.”
I let out a small sigh. Reluctantly doing as I’m told. The guests clear just enough for me to see Mairead’s look of confusion from across the store. As if to say, “Where the fuck are you going?”
I follow the real life Humpty Dumpty, with a stache, to the far back corner of the store, where we find another Star Crew member busily cutting open boxes. The pimple-faced teen is working around glops of fallen contents and broken containers, in an attempt to shelve more products in the baby section.
“Christopher needs his fifteen,” he tells me, once again adjusting even higher on his waist. “I’d like you to clean up this mess while he’s gone.”
The pubescent boy mirrors my astonished look. Like, really…? She’s cleaning it up, not me? I attempt to replace the look of shock from my face. I won’t give Craig the satisfaction of thinking he’s winning with this form of punishment.
“It’s Vaseline! How am I supposed to clean this?”
He walks away. Temporarily disappearing, then reappearing with a yellow bucket on wheels and mop.
“That should do the trick.” He thrusts the wooden handle into my hand. “Come on, Christopher. I don’t need the state slapping my hands, every time a minor doesn’t get their little breaks.”
They both head toward the backroom, on the other side of the store. Leaving me with an impossible mess and the most useless cleaning tool ever. This is so unfair. There’s petroleum jelly everywhere! The floor, the shelves… just as I’m taking in the extent of this god-awful mess, I notice something on the shelf. Something that doesn’t belong. Past a row of diapers, just above a huge glob of oily goo, I see purple. Shifting the shelved items to the side, I find a small, black box with a violet ribbon.
No! It can’t be.
Instinctively, I look down the aisle both ways, seeing no one in sight. I crushed and flushed the last one.
“Argh!”
Of course, another would show up. I pull at the loose bow end, flip off the top, and see it. The earbud. The insulting device with the purple mark, that might as well be a boomerang. No matter how hard I try to get rid of the thing, it just keeps coming back.
Craig is looming and I don’t want to be caught doing something else unregulated. The last thing I need is to be fired.
Tucking my hair behind my ear, I carefully remove my hearing aid and drop it into the front pocket of my apron. Despite my better judgment, I nestle the cursed earbud into my vacant ear, then push the box back, behind a line of disposable diapers.
